Cat's in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon
by pineapplefreak
Summary: Whether you're God himself, a time-traveling anachronism, a widower on a quest for revenge, or just a man trying to keep his promise... being a father is hard.


**Welp, it's the weekend and I'm bored and my other stories aren't working for me today, so here! Have a nice long, random one-shot.**

**Mostly general spoilers, but especially for 2.01 In My Time Of Dying, 2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2, 5.22 Swan Song, 6.01 Exile on Main Street, 6.21 Let It Bleed, and 8.12 As Time Goes By.**

* * *

_"__The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him."_

_- _Proverbs 23:24

* * *

Being a father is hard.

Especially when one happens to be the father of a host of thousands of angels and an entire planet of people besides. He feels overwhelmed sometimes, in spite of Himself (after all, He is God, and haven't they always said that with Him all things are possible?) because even in Heaven, there is family drama. Albeit drama on a cosmic scale that threatens the peace of Heaven and the fate of humanity, but then He supposes He shouldn't judge so harshly- every family has its issues.

And He can't say He didn't see it coming, either (because it's true that He sees everything, knows everything, but He's foolish enough to think perhaps He is wrong. He should have known better. He is never wrong.) It had started out so wonderfully, with Michael – _Who is like God?_- as the perfect example of a good son, a good angel. But even angels grow lonely, and God delighted in the joy of His child when He created another brother for him- Lucifer, _the Morning Star_. The happiness and the perfection only increased, and He brought forth another for His angelic family- Raphael, _God heals_- and then yet another- Gabriel, _strong man of God_.

There were many more after them, each angel with a name and a purpose. Uriel, _Flame of God. _Anna, _Favor and grace._ Malachi, _My messenger. _Balthazar, _Lord protect the King. _Castiel, _My cover is God. _Zachariah, _the Lord recalled. _Joshua, _Yahweh is salvation. _Naomi, _Pleasantness. _Ezekiel, _God strengthens._ Thousands upon thousands did He create, each one made to love and serve Him with all their celestial hearts.

For a long time the angels lived in Heaven with Him, their existence one of pure happiness and peace. The four archangels blossomed into maturity by His throne. Michael, being the eldest, was the picture of strength and obedience, a role model to his younger brothers. Lucifer grew to be the most beautiful of any angel in heaven, his wings of radiant light a breathtaking sight to any who saw them. Raphael, a natural leader and eager to take charge, seemed determined to follow in Michael's footsteps. The young Gabriel grew close to Lucifer, dazzled by his brother's humor and headstrong will.

But it was when He brought forth the true flower of creation (His humans, His people) that things started to go wrong. That was when His most beautiful son took a turn for the darkness, jealousy and pride clouding Lucifer's heart. He warned him, _Jealousy is dangerous. Pride is the worst sin._ But it did little to change Lucifer's path.

He _did_ see it coming, but it saddens Him anyway when Lucifer commits the highest betrayal and stands against Him with a third of the Heavenly host at his back. It still breaks his heart as Michael battles the brother he once loved and stands over him in victory, even as his face speaks of defeat. It hurts all the same to see Lucifer fall from Heaven in flames, laughing a dark amalgamation of humor and wickedness even as he hurtles towards the Pit.

It's mostly downhill after that. Heaven's in pieces after the war, humankind is forever tainted with sin after Lucifer's temptation to Eve, His fallen son begins twisting human souls into demons, and Earth becomes a big mess of sin and fornication and murder and pain. Michael retreats into himself after his younger brother's fall, Raphael is left floundering without the guidance Michael had always provided him with, and Gabriel just leaves altogether, merging with the enormous group of Norse gods and giving himself a new name- Loki.

His heart weeps at the tragedy His world has become, and even after He sends a Flood to try and purify the sin it always finds a way back in. He wonders just how many of His children that really, truly, love and trust Him are left.

Nothing hurts a father more than being forgotten by the ones to which he gave life.

* * *

_Little Gabriel looks up at Him with wide eyes, part fearful, part ashamed, but mostly amused. He giggles and tries to wriggle out of Michael's arms, but his brother holds him tight. Michael looks solemn as he reports Gabriel's latest misadventure: terrorizing the fledglings while they tested their wings for the first time._

_Gabriel quiets at His admonishing look, and begins to protest. "It wasn't just me! Raph was there too! And it was Lucifer's idea!"_

_Said Raphael and Lucifer halted in their attempts to surreptitiously slip from the room when He turned His gaze on them. They both had the grace to look somewhat sheepish, but it only lasted a moment before Lucifer spoke up._

_"But you should have seen them, Father! They were all really wobbly and unsure in the air, and when we snuck up on them and shouted 'BOO!' they all just fell in unison- plop!- right on their faces!"_

_Raphael and Gabriel can't suppress their outburst of laughter at that, and even Michael is fighting hard to hold back an amused smile._

_He allows Himself a single chuckle, the mere sound of which brightens the entire room. _

_"You know," he says, "You would do much more good by actually helping them to fly, don't you think?"_

_The three troublemakers nod at the same time in agreement, sensing escape from punishment._

_"You're right, Father, of course."_

_"We will definitely go do that."_

_"I bet that would be fun!"_

_He smiles. "Go on then. I expect them all to be top-notch flyers when you're done with them!"_

_Lucifer and Raphael assure him that they will, and leave the room. Gabriel jumps out of Michael's arms and starts to follow them, tugging his big brother by the hand._

_"C'mon, Mikey, you should come too! Have some fun with us!"_

_Michael laughs and allows himself to be dragged from the room. "Alright, I suppose."_

_He smiles as He watches them go._

* * *

Being a father is hard.

Henry Winchester realizes this now, more than ever. Here he sits at a dirty little table in a dirty little motel room in the honest-to-God year 2013, with his full grown grandsons who are probably nearly as old as him sleeping not ten feet away. He holds the worn leather journal in his hands and wonders what he will find inside, who his son became without him. He's not sure he'll like what he finds, but that doesn't matter because he _needs_ to know. Slowly he opens the journal, and breathes out a sigh as he begins the first page. _I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth…_

He was right: it _does_ hurt. Henry can't stop wetness from blurring his vision as he reads further and further, about lonely nights haunted by dreams of blood and fire, about sons that cry out in their sleep for their mother, about hunts of horrendous creatures Henry has only ever studied in books, about painful injuries only casually mentioned- as if bodily harm is no concern of John's, about exorcisms and rituals and ways to kill, about the same resolution scrawled down every new year. _I'm going to find it, Mary. This year, I'm going to find it._

He sees diagrams and pictures of nightmarish creatures that his son encountered nearly every day, he fingers obituaries and news articles paper-clipped to the pages, he reads about fights with monsters and fights with Sam, he learns what it is to be a hunter when death lurks around every dark corner.

And through it all, Henry thinks over and over, _It's my fault. My fault. My fault._

His fault because he'd left John, his fault because he didn't come back. His fault because John grew up thinking his father abandoned him, his fault because his son grew up blind to the truth. His fault that John struggled to be a father, his fault because he wasn't there.

There is so much pain in these pages, so much loss and death and suffering, and Henry makes a decision that he _can't _let this happen. He sneaks away while his grandsons lay sleeping, his only thought of their father that he's left behind.

But it turns out that Henry isn't the only one desperate to save his family, and even though he knows Dean is almost definitely driving him to his death he can't bring himself to feel angry. In fact, he feels grudgingly proud. Even if John had raised Henry's grandchildren to be_ hunters_, of all things, he had done something right- taught them that when it comes down to it, family is all you have.

Not much later, when he lays bleeding and dying in the arms of his youngest grandson and looking into the eyes of his oldest, he knows that even though John will grow up hating him, he'll do all right.

He just wishes John would know that Henry hadn't abandoned him- that Henry would _never _abandon him if he only had the choice.

* * *

_The air smells like popcorn and butter, and the big screen lights up the gleaming cars lined up in the drive-in theater. A few cars over, a young couple is kissing in the front seat, paying no attention whatsoever to the events onscreen. John sees them, and Henry chuckles at the disgusted expression on his face._

_"Ewww!" John exclaims. "That's gross!"_

_Henry smiles knowingly. "Give it a few years. You'll be singing a different tune then."_

_John shakes his head in horror. "No I won't! Girls are gross. They have cooties!"_

_Henry just shakes his head in amusement while John rummages his small hand around in the enormous popcorn bucket. He reaches over and takes a few pieces of popcorn, throwing them in the air one by one and catching them in his mouth. John's jaw drops open in awe._

_"How did you do that?!" he exclaims, tossing a few pieces of his own up in the air and opening his mouth wide. Most of the pieces fall to the floor. One hits him square in the eye. "Ow!" _

_Henry grins and ruffles John's hair. "It just takes practice."_

_John shushes him suddenly and focuses on the screen. "Shh, it's getting good!"_

_Just ten minutes later, John is curled up against Henry's side and watching the mummy onscreen through his fingers. He gasps and buries his face in Henry's shirt._

_"It's scary, Pops!" His voice is muffled._

_Henry puts an arm around him and pulls him closer. "It's alright, I'm right here. Don't be scared, it's just a movie."_

_John just shakes his head and presses his face into the fabric harder. "Scary!" he repeats, refusing to be coaxed out of the shirt._

_He stays there for most of the rest of the movie, and looks pale and shaken when it ends. He jumps violently when a car revs its engine as it drives out of the theater._

_"Too scary, huh?" Henry asks sympathetically._

_"I wasn't actually scared," John protests with a swallow. "I was just kidding."_

_Henry smiles. "Alright. Whatever you say."_

_He turns on the stereo anyway as they drive home, and sings the first song he hears at the top of his lungs: "As Time Goes By". He ignores the looks he gets from the passersby and soon John is laughing and singing along too. Henry is pleased to see that he doesn't look the least bit scared anymore._

* * *

Being a father is hard.

Being a single father is even harder, and being a single father who also happens to be a hunter is the hardest thing of all. It wears on John Winchester every day, that he has to be a drill sergeant first and a father second. He wishes that he could give his boys the life they deserve, with a lasting home and a permanent school and real friends, and he tells himself that he will. Just as soon as this hunt is over. Just as soon as the thing that killed Mary is dead.

Because he misses Mary, misses her _so damn much _that there are days when it's hard to breathe. And he always thought the saying, "You never know what you have until it's gone" was terribly overused, but he realizes now that it's true, because he thinks he loves her now more than ever. He regrets the fights they had, and that one time when he walked out on her for a couple days when Sam was just a couple months old. He wishes he could take it back, all of it, that he could just go back and spend every second possible with Mary in his arms. He always makes it seem as if they had the perfect marriage whenever he talks about her to the boys, as if saying it often enough will make it true.

Years pass and he's still no closer to finding the thing that destroyed his happiness, and he's gotten to the point where he knows even if (no, when) he does kill it, there will be no getting out of the hunting life. It's at that point that he gives up hope of normal and tells the boys they might as well too, even if it's not in so many words.

But Sam is hopeful and stubborn and smart. Sam wants to stay in one town, Sam wants to be on the school soccer team, Sam wants to do his homework instead of going hunting, Sam wants to go to college.

Sam doesn't remember Mary. Sam doesn't understand.

So John yells at him and calls him selfish and tells him that no they can't stick around for a few more days, no he can't go to mock trial when there's a ghost that needs taken care of, no he can't be normal, _they_ can't be normal, nothing is going to be normal ever again.

There's a part of John that agrees with Sam. There's a part that breaks whenever he wins a fight and Sam stalks away with that angry, crestfallen look on his face. There's a part that regrets putting so much responsibility on Dean's shoulders, taking away his childhood, telling him his brother's life is in his hands. There's a part that wants Dean to be an average rebellious teenager like his brother every now and then instead of a soldier who never disobeys.

There's a part, small as it is, that's proud when Sam storms off to Stanford to follow his own dreams.

In the aftermath of that final fight, John goes back to the bottle for a while, and Dean just goes on doing everything he's supposed to do. But his son is quiet, too quiet, and John pretends not to notice when he still sticks to his single half of the bed in the motel even though the other half is empty now, and when he starts to take out three plates for dinner instead of two, and when he turns up the music in the car to drown out the space where the teasing banter used to be. When Dean softly suggests one night that they _could _go after Sam and they _could _bring him back, John roughly replies that Sam made his choice and he's going to have to live with it.

There was a safe in the house back in Lawrence. It had money in it, money that was saved for Dean and Sam's college funds. But the safe burned up with everything else, and John thinks it's almost poetic.

When a solo hunt reveals something bigger, and John leaves Dean behind for his own safety, and the voicemails begin piling up on his phone, and Dean fetches his brother from Stanford's safe arms, and the Demon is revealed to be the one behind it all, John knows the hunt of his life is coming close to ending.

The boys get dragged in deeper and deeper, and John knows that it's Sam that the Demon wants, and when he's in the hospital with Dean dying with every passing moment and Sam falling apart just as fast he makes a choice. He makes a deal.

But how does he say goodbye for the last time? What does he tell his boys before he faces Hell alone?

In the end, it's _I don't want to fight anymore _and a cup of coffee, it's _Don't be scared _and a whispered secret.

Maybe it's selfish that part of the reason he gives up his soul for Dean's life is so that when _Save Sam or kill him _comes to be, he doesn't have to pull the trigger himself. Maybe he deserves Hell after putting that on Dean. But he tells himself it's for the best.

Sam and Dean need each other. They don't need him.

* * *

_For once, it's an easy hunt. Dark is only just falling when John goes to scope out the haunted house alone. Dean, being thirteen, could have definitely come with him, and even nine-year-old Sam could have handled this, but John thinks he should just get it over with himself._

_When the ghost attacks, it unwittingly leads him to its bones hidden beneath the floorboards, and with a quick salt-and-burn it's over, just like that. John loves it when things are this simple and he doesn't even have to know who the ghost is to get rid of it._

_It puts him in a good mood, and as he makes his way back to the car he thinks maybe he'll take the boys out to eat somewhere where the food is actually quality and isn't drowning in grease tonight, just because. When he pulls up to the motel and walks towards his room his footsteps are light. He opens the door and has a split second to hear Sam and Dean's voices shout, "April Fool's!" before a lot of something wet comes crashing down on him._

_He looks up and sees the bucket above the door and looks down and sees himself covered in neon green paint, and there's a split second where both his sons are looking at him half-fearfully and half-gleefully to see if he'll be pissed or not and where he wonders himself if he's going to pissed or not. And he figures, what the hell._

_"Green, boys, really?" He says, a smile playing across his lips. "I always thought blue was more my color."_

_They both crack up at that, and high-five each other. John lets himself laugh too, and then makes a move as if he's about to hug them and get paint all over them. They scramble away, still nearly falling over themselves with laughter. After a few minutes their amusement dies down to mild giggling. _

_Sam, seeming to still worry that John might get angry, says, "Dean came up with the prank."_

_"Sam chose the color," Dean shot right back._

_"Well, both of you are going to have to clean it up," John says, pointing to the green-stained carpet. Looks of horror cross his sons' faces as if they hadn't even thought about that._

_He moves towards the bathroom to get cleaned up. "After, I think we'll go out and get some food. Somewhere good."_

_Dean frowns. "What about the ghost?"_

_"Taken care of," John replies. _

_It's Sam's turn to look concerned. "Does that mean we're gonna leave again?"_

_John hesitates. They'd been in this town for a few weeks now (there had been a whole lot of old haunts here suddenly acting up) and there were only about two weeks left until the school went on spring break. There was a werewolf pack a few states over that had to be taken care of, but John could get Caleb on that. And Pastor Jim had mentioned a rash of strange deaths in North Dakota, but that was close enough to be Bobby's jurisdiction. He could spare a little while. _

_He smiles at his youngest. "Nah, I think we'll stick around a little longer."_

_Sam lights up. "Yay!"_

_John gestures to the paint again. "Get that mess taken care of."_

_"Yes, sir," the boys chorus._

_John goes into the bathroom and hears them talking through the thin door._

_"You heard him," Dean says. "Clean it up."_

_"What? You have to help, too!" Sam protests._

_"I will supervise and make sure you're doing it right."_

_"That's not fair! How come you just get to watch?"_

_"Because I'm older."_

_"But-"_

_"Seniority rules, Sam!"_

_Sam huffs indignantly. "I hate you."_

_Dean laughs. "Aw, Sammy, you're breaking my heart."_

_John sighs as he turns on the water of the shower and steps in, green paint swirling down the drain._

_"I swear to God, Mary," he mutters. "Your sons are going to be the death of me."_

_But of course, John can't take a prank like that lying down. And he knows where Dean keeps his itching powder._

_And if he laughs his head off the next day when Sam and Dean come home from school trying to itch themselves without anyone noticing and pretending nothing's wrong even though they're fidgeting like a couple of toddlers in church- well, sue him._

_He's allowed to be a dad every now and then._

* * *

Being a father is hard.

It's not that Dean Winchester hasn't had any practice with it- after all, he was father, mother, brother, and best friend to Sam his whole life. It's just that he can't stand sitting around playing house when his kid is downstairs burning in Hell in sacrifice to save the world.

Don't get him wrong, he loves Ben, he does, and Lisa too. He cares about them and cares _for_ them, and they return the favor. But Dean's never been one for suburbia (that was always Sam's dream, not his) and he feels itchy inside his own skin at barbecues and friends' houses and football games. He doesn't _belong_ here, and the only reason he stays at all is because of Lisa and Ben and the promise he made.

Ben is a normal kid, and Dean tries to be a normal father. But the things he did to be second father to Sam- helping him practice shooting, cheering him on in his first hunt, comforting him when they had to leave town again, experimenting with something new for dinner because Spaghettio's on the motel stove gets tiresome after a while- aren't things he's supposed to do with Ben. With Ben, he's supposed to play catch in the back yard and teach him to tackle in football and help him with his math homework and make him mow the lawn.

Dean tries, he really does. And after a while, it gets better. The nightmares slow, even if they don't stop completely (_Hell is hot and red and full of screams, and Alastair stands behind him and whispers encouragement as he cuts into victim after victim, vivisecting and dissecting and all sort of other sectings, and when he looks down it's Sam under the knife. It's always Sam. They're _all _Sam.)_ and the dreams that start out good but turn ugly fast (_He's sitting with Sam on the roof of the Impala under the stars with a beer in his hand, and Sam's laughing at something he just said, but Sam's laugh suddenly cuts off and when he looks over at his little brother the skin is peeling slowly off his bones and his eyes are blood and darkness and he says, "You left me, Dean. Why did you leave me? Why?" and all Dean can do is whisper, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry.") _and even the strange visions of what could have been (_The landscape is a barren and desolate wasteland, and all around there is death. There is nothing left, no one alive. Sam- no, not Sam, not really- wanders through the carnage, a lonely figure dressed in white with a broken earth all to himself for eternity.)._

Dean learns, slowly but surely, how to do it. He jokes around with Ben about the things he likes and gives him tips on asking out the girls and drives him to his baseball games and sticks around to watch. He socializes with Ben's friends' dads, hell, he even joins the PTA with Lisa. He keeps his promise (even if there is a Devil's trap under the rug and a gun and holy water under the bed) and tries to turn from Dean Winchester, hunter extraordinaire, to Dean Winchester(/Braeden?), average dad.

Half the time, he thinks he can do it. The other half, he wonders how long it's going to be before he breaks.

A lot of the times, it's Sam's name that's on the tip of his tongue when he's talking to Ben, and he wonders if maybe the only reason he's hanging on is because he's trying to make Ben be Sam, and he wonders if that's wrong of him, and he wonders if he doesn't care.

There's going to come a day when he goes crazy from it all. Maybe it will be tomorrow. Maybe it will be next month. Maybe it will be in ten years. He doesn't when, he just knows it will happen.

And in the meantime, he will go to work at his nine-to-five job and he will kiss Lisa when he walks in the door and he will help Ben with his homework and he will have a drink with Sid from next door, and he will wait.

And he will wait.

* * *

_It's a real nice summer day, and Dean and Ben are out on the lake, fishing. It's one of those father and son things that apparently Dean's supposed to do- if not because he enjoys it, then to say he did. Dean feels good today, happy, even. It's one of those days where he can actually look around at the world and _not _feel bitter that Sam gave himself up to save it and it doesn't appear to give a damn. It's one of those days when Ben is Ben, not Sam._

_There's not much to do when fishing other then sit and wait, and there's a lot of time to talk. Ben, being the curious kid he is, sees an opportunity to broach a subject he's been warned not to touch upon, because he thinks that if there was any day he was going to get Dean to talk, it's today._

_Dean barely hears him, his voice is so quiet. So careful._

_"You used to have a brother."_

_Dean glances at him. "Yeah," is all he says._

_"What was his name?"_

_Dean looks out over the water. "Sam," he says softly. "His name was Sam."_

_"I don't really remember meeting him. What was he like?"_

_Dean smiles a little. "He was… he was the best man I've ever known. Real nice to everyone, and he had these puppy dog eyes that could get most women eating out of his hand in seconds. He scared people sometimes because of how gigantic he was, but I remember when he first had that growth spurt and would stagger around like an awkward old drunk because all of a sudden he had all this height that he didn't know what to do with. But he was a good fighter, too, you know? He always had my back, never let me down when I needed him, and was always stressing about the shades of gray and whether we were doing the right thing, and I swear, that kid could go from normal to a little emo bitch in the span of about two seconds…"_

_There's stinging at the back of his eyes, and Dean trails off as he realizes he's rambling. But… God, it's __been so long since he's talked about Sam._

_"I meant chick," he amends to Ben. "Little emo chick. Not bitch. Don't repeat that."_

_Ben laughs. "It's okay. I've heard it before."_

_Dean smiles. "Yeah, well, I don't want your mom on my case for teaching you swear words."_

_There's a comfortable pause. Then Ben asks, "What happened to him? Sam?"_

_The next pause is slightly less comfortable, and Dean wonders if he's going to answer._

_"He… he died," Dean says eventually. "Went down fighting. Saved a lot of people." The whole ungrateful world, in fact. "He knew he was going to die, what was going to happen, but he went anyway. Because if he didn't, a whole lot more people were going to die, and he couldn't let that happen."_

_There's a heavy silence._

_"He sounds brave," Ben finally says._

_Dean breathes. And for the first time in a long time, he doesn't feel guilty about it._

_"Yeah," Dean says, and his voice breaks just a little. "Yeah, he was. The bravest."_

_When Dean and Ben go home they bring three big fish with them, and Lisa fries them up for dinner. There's a cherry pie cooling on the countertop for dessert. The fish tastes of a well-earned meal and the pie is the sweetness of the hot summer day, and Dean smiles and jokes and laughs right along with Lisa and Ben, and he means it. He feels at home, feels part of this family._

I can do this, _he thinks. _I can do this.

* * *

They think He's abandoned them. They're wrong.

Sure, He might not be sitting on His throne anymore, but that doesn't mean He's not there. He operates under the guise of a prophet, writing about the story unfolding before Him, so that the world can see. It's so strange to talk to His children without them recognizing Him, so unusual to have His own archangel son protecting Him.

Chuck. It's so unremarkable a name; no one ever suspects that it's Him.

He knows they're looking for Him, but they won't find Him. Not even with the amulet that supposedly glows hot in His presence, because if he doesn't want it to burn then it won't, if He doesn't want to be found then He won't.

He can see their anger, can sense their fear, but he knows that they only feel this way because they don't understand. When the time is right, He will step forth and reveal Himself, and will explain why everything must happen the way it does.

He lets them go, and lets them make their own path, their own choices. It's free will, and isn't that what they always wanted, deep down? He can't tell them what to do forever; if He did, they would never grow. So He lets them go on without Him, to live their own lives. But he still watches, and waits to catch them if they ever fall too far (which they don't, they always somehow, impossibly, pull themselves back up)and he listens.

It's what a father does.

* * *

Henry doesn't try to escape as Dean drives him to Abbadon's rendezvous. And not just because he knows it wouldn't do any good- Dean is a trained killer, after all, and he's just a Man of Letters who's never had any adventures outside of books- but also because Sam is his grandson, and as much as he wishes he could get back to John he's not so callous as to leave Sam at Abbadon's non-existent mercy.

So he helps instead, and carves the Devil's trap into the bullet. Dean says, _It could get ugly, _and Henry knows it will be worse than that. And yet he goes like a (sacrificial) lamb to the slaughter, and even as Abbadon's fist punches through his stomach he can't help but smile a little at the shock on her face just moments later after he puts the bullet through her head. Because _holy smokes, _he's never done anything like this before and God help him it's almost _exhilarating, _and he starts to understand why some people turn away the life of a Man of Letters in favor of the dirty, bloody one of a hunter instead.

Not that it matters at this point, because Henry's dying and he's not surprised. He knew that it was coming, knew it with grim certainty as soon as Sam and Dean told him their own father grew up father-less. And he's heard enough stories to know that you can't change the past, no matter what you try.

It's worth it though, he thinks. Because these are his grandsons, his own flesh and blood, two boys doing the best they can to save people even though there are so many things they don't know.

Grandfather or father, it all comes down to the same thing.

* * *

Hell is pretty much what John expects it to be. But that doesn't make it any easier.

They cut and they burn and they rip and they tear, and they offer to stop if he simply picks up the knife himself, even though he knows it will twist him, change him into an evil spirit, a demon. And he wants to say yes, wants to make it stop (make it _stop_), wants it so bad, but then he remembers black eyes and red eyes and yellow eyes, remembers blood and hurt and fire, and he thinks, _I won't become that. I won't, _and somehow always has the courage to refuse.

He's just as surprised as everyone else when freedom finally comes in the form of an open door (an open Devil's gate_)_, but he doesn't question it because his boys are in danger and the demon (_The _Demon_) _is right _there_. And even though he's no more substantial than mist he launches himself forward anyway, and Dean gets the Colt and with a twitch of his finger and a sharp report of a shot and light flickering under skin like a blown out fuse, it's over.

It's _over._

He looks at the Demon and feels a sort of heavy peace, now that Mary has at last been avenged and the one hunt he could never solve is finally over. Then he looks at his boys- his Sam, his Dean- one last time before he fades away, and it doesn't scare him because he's ready. And he just _knows _that wherever he's going, Mary will be there too.

They'll be amazed, Sam and Dean, amazed but probably not surprised that stubborn old John Winchester pulled himself all the way out of the depths of Hell when his boys were in trouble. But really, how could they expect anything less?

He is their father, after all.

* * *

Dean knows he can't have them both.

He's known it ever since Sam came back, when he woke up to see the face he had thought he would never see again just sitting across from him, like pulling off _The Great Escape_ from the worst part of Hell wasn't a big deal or anything. He knew it when his vampire-fied self's bloodlust nearly took over, and it was all he could do just to get out before he killed Ben and Lisa; Ben was lucky a shove was the worst he had gotten. He knew it when Ben parent-trapped him and Lisa, and tried to guilt him into staying. And he knows it now, as a recently un-possessed Lisa lies hurt and nearly dead in the hospital.

He can have Sam, his little brother and the only real family he has left, and the hunting life where tragedy and darkness waits around every corner. Or he can have Lisa and Ben, the family he tried to make himself a part of, and a life of normalcy that he never really fit into. He can't have them both.

He chooses Sam, of course (he's always chosen Sam, he'll always choose Sam), for he knows that even if he did choose to stay with Lisa and be a father to Ben, the hunt would just find its way back in again. It always does. Just the fact that they _know _him puts them in danger, and it's for that reason that he asks Castiel for one more favor.

It hurts when Ben and Lisa look at him and don't recognize him, and Ben's casual _Who are you? _cuts straight to his heart. But it's better this way.

He tells Ben, _Watch out for your Mom, _even though that's supposed to be ben's father's job. Dean was something of a father to Ben once, even entertained the thought that maybe Lisa was wrong and Ben really is his son. It doesn't matter now, though, because now he has to leave and never look back so that they're safe, so that he doesn't have to worry, so that Lisa can find someone she loves that won't put her in danger, so that Ben can live to grow into the great man Dean knows he will be someday.

Any true father would do the same.


End file.
